CHICAGO  The Pritzkers may be the richest family most of America has never heard of, and they'd be happy to keep it that way.

But a lawsuit by two of the youngest Pritzkers is giving the family's private affairs a soapy public laundering. The suit has exposed deep generational rifts and may even pose a threat to the financial future of the family's $15 billion dynasty.

While the family name lacks the corporate cachet of the Mars candy fortune or the Waltons and their Wal-Mart empire, the Pritzkers have built the Hyatt hotel chain, and they have been generous in public service.

They underwrite the top award in architecture, the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The family name is also attached to the medical school at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University's law library in Chicago and a wing of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Now, that sterling image is being tarnished by the lawsuit filed by actress Liesel Pritzker, 19, and her brother Matthew, 20. They claim their estranged father, Robert Pritzker, with the knowledge of other family members, "looted" as much as $1 billion from each of their trust funds.

Siblings allege 'secret plan'

The suit alleges their father shifted Hyatt Corp. stock from their trusts into other family trusts. They claim he then included the stock and other assets in a "secret plan" to divide the family fortune among him and 11 of their cousins.

His motivation, the suit alleges, was anger at Liesel over her burgeoning acting career. She starred in the 1995 movie A Little Princess using the name Liesel Matthews. She also played the president's daughter opposite Harrison Ford in Air Force One in 1997.

The suit contends that Robert Pritzker's lingering animosity toward Liesel and Matthew stems partly from his relationship with their mother, Irene, his second wife. They divorced in 1989.

Robert Pritzker denies the allegations in the lawsuit. He has asked Cook County Chancery Judge Patrick McGann to dismiss the lawsuit. He said in his motion, "The trustees had full authority to act as they did." A court hearing on several motions is scheduled for today.

Family members have declined to talk publicly.

The "purpose in creating all of these trusts was to build great businesses, keep them together for future generations and benefit the community as a whole through charity and good works," says Bruce Leadbetter, a family friend for 30 years. The Dallas aviation executive ran Braniff Airlines for the Pritzkers in the 1960s.

The patriarch of the family was Nicholas Pritzker, who arrived in the USA from Ukraine in 1881 at age 10. He learned English by reading newspapers and worked his way through college. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1901 at age 30. His three sons joined him at the law firm Pritzker & Pritzker, which still operates today.

One son, A.N. Pritzker, started the family fortune with investments in real estate. A.N.'s sons, Jay and Robert Pritzker, essentially created the family empire.

Jay Pritzker paid $2.5 million in 1955 for a hotel near the Los Angeles airport to serve businessmen who were beginning to travel more by plane. That hotel, the Hyatt House, evolved into the current chain of 206 hotels and spas worldwide.

Robert Pritzker created The Marmon Group, an industrial conglomerate with more than 100 factories, plants and other interests that are widely reported to earn yearly revenues of $6.6 billion.

A family meeting, a memo

Donald, the youngest Pritzker brother, died at age 39 in 1972. The three brothers had 13 children known as "the cousins." Liesel and Matthew are the youngest.

The eldest cousin, Jay Pritzker's daughter Nancy, committed suicide in 1971 at age 24. The University of Chicago medical school is named for her. Jay Pritzker's oldest son, Tom, 53, is now the chairman of Hyatt. Donald's oldest child, Penny, 44, is the No. 3 executive at Hyatt.

They run the family business along with Nick Pritzker, 58, a cousin of Jay.

None of the eight other cousins is involved in the family business.

In June 1995, Jay and Robert Pritzker called a family meeting, summoning the cousins to Tom Pritzker's condominium on Lake Shore Drive. Liesel and Matthew, then ages 11 and 12, were not invited, according to a media adviser hired by Tom, Penny and Nick Pritzker who doesn't want to be named.

At the meeting, Jay Pritzker distributed a memo that is now at the center of the family's defense in the case. A copy of the memo was supplied to USA TODAY by a lawyer for one group of defendants.

In the memo, Jay and Robert Pritzker handed over control of the family business to cousins Tom, Nick and Penny Pritzker. But the two brothers also said the cousins should work cooperatively.

"Since our generation primarily created the wealth our Family possesses, within the limits imposed by the law we are entitled to express our wishes as to the disposition of that wealth," Jay Pritzker wrote. "I expect our modus operandi will continue harmoniously through this next generation."

The harmony didn't last five years. Jay Pritzker died in 1999. A year later, Robert Pritzker retired from Marmon as president and chief executive officer. By 2001, the cooperative family spirit was unraveling.

$160 million cushion

A faction of six cousins began questioning Tom, Nick and Penny Pritzker about $500 million in bonuses they received for running the family business and demanded an outside audit of the company's books.

Because of the disharmony, the three cousins agreed last year to turn over day-to-day control of the business to a team of independent advisers. And all the cousins — except Liesel and Matthew Pritzker — began crafting the "secret plan" referred to in the lawsuit to divide the family fortune. The plan, according to a report in Business Week confirmed by Tom Pritzker, would provide "liquidity" to benefit all family members. He did not rule out the possibility of offering Hyatt's privately held stock for public sale.

Dividing the family fortune could leave each of the 11 cousins with at least $1.2 billion, enough for each to make Forbes' list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.

Liesel Pritzker filed her lawsuit in November, after her lawyers discovered the money had been moved from her trusts and was part of the plan to divide the family fortune. Her brother tried to negotiate a settlement for five months, but that fell apart, and in April he filed his own lawsuit.

The two lawsuits were joined May 1.

Matthew Pritzker attends American University in Washington, D.C. Liesel Pritzker, a Columbia University student, lives in New York and recently acted on Broadway in Vincent in Brixton.

Neither will be left destitute if the lawsuit is lost. Like other family members with claims on the family fortune, each still has a secure trust worth about $160 million.